Chapter 149

Angel’s POV

The first thing I was aware of when I woke up was warmth.

Not the warmth of blankets or a fire, but the warmth of being held by someone all night long. I surfaced from sleep very slowly, and I became aware of things in stages.

The light was the pale gold of very early morning.

The room smelled of woodsmoke and I felt someone watching me.

I knew that tiny detail before I opened my eyes. And when I did open my eyes, I saw him.

Terrell.

He was lying facing me, his head on the pillow, watching me wake up. His eyes in the morning light were - I had not had the opportunity to look at his eyes in morning light before, and the morning light made them look totally different and more beautiful than the candlelight and the firelight and the corridor-light ever did.

I felt heat arrive in my face as memories of last night flooded in, and I immediately pulled the cover up over my face.

His hand caught my wrists before the cover reached its destination.

"No," he said.

His voice in the morning was different from his voice at any other hour - lower, deeper, hotter.

"Terrell..."

"You have nothing to be shy of," he said. He pulled my hands gently away from the cover, holding them without pressure. "Nothing."

I looked at him over the edge of the cover.

"I love all of you," he said. "Your body. The way you smell." His eyes moved over my face with tender warmth. "I just want to stay here all day and just... " He pressed his face to the side of mine, his nose against my cheek, nuzzling me fondly. "Burrow into you," he said. "And not come out."

I laughed.

It came out before I could do anything about it - the genuine laugh of someone extremely happy.

He made a sound against my cheek that was its own version of laughter - warm and low.

"Don’t laugh at me," I said.

"I’m laughing near you," he said.

I pulled back to look at him with more laughter. "You’re impossible."

"I know."

The laughter settled into something quieter - just two people who have laughed together and are now in the space afterward. He pulled me closer and I let myself be pulled and we lay in the morning light with his arms around me.

I had not felt this at home since before the altar, before the convent, before the raid and the road and every event that has brought us here. I had not felt this particular sense of belonging anywhere - not in the home I had grown up in, where love had been real but the mockery of the girls in the market had followed me home, where my body had always been a subject for commentary, where I had learned early to make myself smaller in ways that had nothing to do with size.

Here, in this room, in this man’s arms, the size of me was something he had specifically addressed.

I love all of you.

I pressed closer.

His mouth found mine - soft and sweet, causing fireworks to light up in my belly. He kissed me the way someone kissed something they had time for.

He pulled back just enough to look at me.

"I’m madly in love with you," he said.

The words melted my soul.

I reached up.

I put my hand against his face - his jaw, his cheekbone - and I held it there.

"I love you too," I said.

Something moved through his eyes that I didn’t have a name for.

"Angel." He turned his face slightly into my hand. "I need you to know that I..." He stopped. "What I did to your family. The village." He met my eyes. "If I could go back..."

"Terrell..."

"Let me say it," he said quietly. "I need to say it." He held my gaze. "If I could go back, I wouldn’t do what I did. Not the way I did it." His jaw was tight. "The family that wronged me - they would have answered for it. But the rest of them. The village. The people who had nothing to do with it." Something moved through his face. "I would not have touched them."

I looked at him.

At the man who had put a head on a stake for me and offered land to his captors and come over a cliff for a woman he could have let fall.

"I know," I said.

"That’s not enough..."

"I know," I said again. Gently. "And I... Terrell." I held his eyes. "I forgive you."

He went very still.

"I know what that should mean and I know what it actually means in this moment and I’m telling you that where I am right now - I forgive you." I pressed my hand more firmly against his jaw. "I don’t want to carry it anymore. I want to carry what comes next instead."

"Angel..."

"The good things," I said. "What we can do. What we can build." I held his gaze. "What we can fix."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he pressed his forehead to mine.

"I can’t wait," he said. "To start this properly. To actually..." A breath. "To have a life with you that isn’t cliffs and slave traders and assassins."

I laughed softly. "That would be nice."

"We’ll have children," he said. Something in his voice had shifted - like a dream. "Little ones running along these walls."

I felt the warmth move through me. "I want them to look like you."

He pulled back to look at me. "They should look like you."

"They should absolutely not look like me..."

"Angel." His expression was entirely serious except for the parts that weren’t. "They will be the most beautiful children in any territory."

"They’ll have your face," I said, "which is an objective improvement on my starting material..."

"They’ll have your eyes," he said. "And your heart." A pause. "And hopefully none of my temper."

"Your temper balanced with my - what would you call it?"

"Compassion," he said immediately. "Your compassion." He said it softly. "They’ll be dangerous," he added, with something that was definitely a smile. "Ruthless when necessary and kind when not. The most well-balanced people in the known world."

I laughed. "I completely agree."

He held me for a moment, the particular warmth of it, and then I thought of something.

"About Merrick," I said.

He didn’t tense. That was - I had expected something, some change in his posture, but he absorbed the name with the steadiness of someone who had already thought about this.

"How does he..." I looked for the right words. "How does he fit?"

Terrell was quiet for a moment. Not the quiet of avoidance - the quiet of consideration.

"When you want time with him," he said, "I’ll give it to you. Whatever that looks like. Whatever you need with him." He met my eyes. "I won’t intrude on that." A pause. "I can’t promise I won’t be jealous." Something moved at the corner of his mouth. "But I’ll manage it."

I looked at him.

I thought about Merrick - warm and easy and genuinely kind, the man who had gone over a castle wall for Agnes’s son, who had cared for me in every way possible. I cared about him. I would always care about him.

But.

But he was not this. He had never been this - the pull of Terrell, the thing that happened in my chest when Terrell looked at me, the way I had never been able to stop thinking about Terrell no matter how hard I had tried.

I didn’t feel any of that towards Merrick.

I would talk to Merrick. When the time was right. Honestly. He deserved honesty.

"Thank you," I said.

Terrell kissed me again - softer this time, the sleepy morning version.

"We need to rest," he murmured against my mouth. "The cliff. Your wolf..."

I opened one eye. "My wolf."

"It needs time," he said. "To fully..." He seemed to be losing the thread of the sentence in the direction of sleep himself, which I found completely endearing. "Settle."

"What if the crazy Luna chasing after Agnes and Merrick are close by right now?" I asked. "Shouldn’t you be..."

"Gareth," he said. Eyes closed. "My generals." A pause. "And other soldiers."

"You trust them with that?"

"With my life." A beat. "And yours."

I settled back against him, and let it be.

I closed my eyes against his chest with the sounds of Black Wolf waking up around us and I thought about children with his jaw and my eyes and the perfect mixture of ruthless and compassionate running along these walls, and the thought was so ordinarily lovely that it felt like a dream.